In digital drawing and painting systems, a gradient is generally a blending of colors or shades of colors which is rendered in a user interface. Conventional systems can render gradients for use as colorful backgrounds, special effects, project themes, presentation styles, etc. Some types of gradients can be designed as a digital asset which may be used to apply the gradient, for example, to fill geometries of various digital objects. In this manner, conventional systems enable a digital artist to design a gradient such as a by manipulation of color points which control the colors of the gradient, and then the gradient design can be applied to many other objects. This allows the digital artist to propagate the gradient design across multiple objects quickly and efficiently.
Freeform gradients are a type of gradient that can be used to create a blend of colors within a geometry of an object in an ordered or random sequence such that the blending appears smooth and natural. These gradients are created by arranging color points on a mesh of an object. Each color point has an associated color value, and conventional systems use the color values to interpolate colors to generate the freeform gradients within the geometry of the object. However, freeform gradients are object specific and therefore cannot be applied to other objects as is the case with linear and radial gradients. This is frustrating to digital artists as they must attempt to recreate a freeform gradient of a source object in a target object to transfer a style of the freeform gradient from the source object to the target object. Accordingly, the inability to transfer freeform gradient styles among digital objects presents a technological problem in the field of digital drawing and painting.